


For my god and for my king I will not rest

by thought



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, SI-5 are bad people, friendship means never having to say you value human life over technological progress, if Goddard Futuristics had a sunshine list Alana Maxwell would be on it, no feelings only coffee, unhealthy competition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 03:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: The first time Jacobi kills someone up close, Kepler is... kind. At least for Kepler.He's not kind with Maxwell.





	For my god and for my king I will not rest

Maxwell starts working for Goddard in May. She's in R and D for a month before Kepler pulls her for his open-secret vanity project five years in the making, during which time she manages to make enemies of everyone in the computing division, become bffs with almost every single AI working on the Canaveral campus, unintentionally spark a Narnia vs. Hogwarts war, intentionally spark a Perl vs. Python war, and move every project she works on forward by months, if not years, thus justifying the frankly alarming figures on her employment contract.

"You told me yourself you've owned those sneakers since you were fifteen," Jacobi says. "What do you do with it all?"

"It's called not devaluing yourself. You should try it."

The day after that conversation, Jacobi comes into the Aerospace Engineering building in search of Klein and instead finds Maxwell threatening an espresso machine as it sprays increasingly frantic bursts of steam in random directions and gurgles alarmingly.

"Do you... need help with that?" he asks, rocking back on his heels.

She shoves a stack of paper towels under the steam spouts, obviously scalding the back of her hand but not reacting in any visible way. She turns to face him, ignoring the increasing speed of the ticking noises from the machine behind her. "I received a million dollars for my contributions to artificial intelligence language and communication development," she says, expressionlessly. "When I was 23. I beat out Judea Pearl."

"I don't know who that is," Jacobi says, and Maxwell makes a pained noise. "Does that mean you don't need help?"

Behind her, the machine has started rocking back and forth.

"I'm fine," she says.

Jacobi finds out later that the machine wound up blowing up. He doesn't say a word.

When Kepler brings her into his office and then into his confidence and into his team, no one is surprised. She's been eating lunch with Kepler's favourite explosives guy since her second day, and Rachel Young glares at her for no immediately apparent reason whenever they pass in the halls. Really, hiring her under R and D was just to keep things tidy on the paperwork, everyone knew she was bound for SI.

Jacobi's switch in departments had been unremarkable to the point that there were multiple people in HR who had dismissed the form as a duplicate, because surely Daniel Jacobi already worked in SI. Nobody would spend that much time with Major Kepler willingly.

Even though Jacobi's been SI since 2012, Maxwell's arrival spurs Kepler into action and the number of missions Jacobi is part of skyrockets. Their physical work spaces don't change, which would probably be awkward if they were the sort of people who noticed or cared about the social temperature of a room. Their projects, when they're not on mission, are a little more... classified. There's a lot less time for side projects, which takes Jacobi a while to get used to, but there's also a hell of a lot less oversight, which they both agree is worth any crushed creative aspirations. The patents would belong to Goddard, anyway.

Their first mission as a team is 36 hours at a fancy hotel in Denmark, during which Kepler tries too hard to act like Maxwell's always been there and Jacobi tries too hard to welcome her aboard and Maxwell winds up hyperventilating in the bathroom for an hour.

And then she doesn't shoot a security guard when Kepler tells her to and Jacobi thinks 'Well, that's it, good try, everybody'. He doesn't blame her. The first time he had to see another person die because of his direct actions he'd spent the rest of the mission feeling like he was moving underwater, everything distant and blurry and distorted. Kepler had been... kind, he supposes. For Kepler. Got him back to the car and drove them out on an abandoned stretch of country dirt road where he'd let Jacobi have his ethical crisis in peace, one warm hand rubbing up and down his back.

He's not kind with Maxwell. He waits until they're back in the room and then he tears into her, hands pinning her shoulders against the wall, specks of spit flying like he's on stage. She yells back. Jacobi thinks, later, he shouldn't have been surprised.

"Last time I checked, you hired me to actually use my brain," she says, poking him hard in the chest. "If I misunderstood please, let me know, and we can end this right here."

"I hired you to follow orders," Kepler bites out.

"Which I'm willing to do, if they're actually orders that make sense. Test me all you like, but when you give stupid orders just to see if I'm capable of killing another person you're the only one who comes out looking bad. There was no tactical reason that man had to die."

"Did you... at any point in the _ample_ time I gave you to do so, read the SI-5 handbook?"

"Sure," Maxwell says. "You'll notice I didn't question your stupid order, I just decided not to follow it. For the sake of the mission."

Kepler breathes out, slowly. "Perhaps," he says, "I was incorrect when I deemed you ready to join SI-5."

Maxwell scoffs. "Oh come on, I'm perfectly ready and you know it."

Later, on the flight back to the states, Jacobi says "How did you know he was going to let it go?" He can only predict Kepler about 50% of the time, and he's had years to study him. Maxwell, who is notably worse at people than he is, could not have figured him out in just a few weeks.

She laughs, a little, lays her hands flat on the tray table. "I didn't. Jesus, Jacobi, I was pretty sure he was going to kill me."

"Then why did you keep pushing him?" he asks, incredulous.

"Start as you mean to go on," she says. "I couldn't just back down, that would have been worse."

"Oh good," Jacobi says. "Another one." Maybe it makes sense that she can predict Kepler after all.

*

The actual first time she kills someone it happens so fast that Jacobi doesn't even realize what's going on for a good two minutes. He's setting a pretty complex series of detonations ("sure, Major, I love performing the impossible when I haven't slept for 26 hours") and there are a lot of well-paid ex-Marines hanging around who have been hired with the soul purpose of killing the SI-5 team. Kepler's keeping them off his back while Maxwell hunts down client lists on the office computer. Jacobi, whose job had started two floors below and half way across the building, is really not enjoying the experience of completing the most difficult part of his task with bullets flying overhead and glass shattering literally right on top of him.

When he finishes and looks up, his gaze moves first to the computer where he's expecting to see Maxwell, but she's not there. Staying low, he crosses the room to the door, where Kepler and Maxwell are crouched on either side, keeping the hallway clear. Kepler's jaw is tight and he's shooting indiscriminately, corner of his mouth twitching every time he hears someone cry out. Maxwell, on the other hand, looks kind of like she does when she's playing a particularly challenging level in Antichamber, teeth set in her lower lip as she contemplates a decision, then moving fast and abrupt, leaning around the edge of the door and firing quick, careful shots.

"We're good to go," Jacobi says. "By which I mean, we have six minutes to get the hell away from this building."

"Well done, Mr. Jacobi," Kepler says.

"Thank you?"

They have to pick their way past a mess of dead bodies to get out. Jacobi pulls his shirt up to cover his nose and focuses on Kepler's back, the bulk of kevlar under his jacket, the lock of hair displaced and sticking up at the crown of his head. He'll be getting a hair cut any day now.

They take the stairs down and when they get to the bottom Jacobi makes the mistake of glancing back. There are three sets of reddish brown footprints on each tiled step. He clenches his teeth, swallows a few times to keep the bile down.

Outside, Maxwell and Kepler are bantering while Jacobi does a quick check of the car for explosives.

"I'm just saying, Major, there's a certain archetype you already inhabit, the Halloween party could be the opportunity you've been waiting for to truly embody your inner rich old white man circa 1900."

"We will not be attending the Halloween party. We're going to have a very important mission that day."

"You can't predict that."

"It's going to be on another continent."

"You're just scared Mr. Cutter will make you participate in the costume contest."

"Possibly another planet."

"You know I was never allowed to do Halloween as a child. Are you really going to deprive me of this, an important cornerstone of--"

"Can you two not?" Jacobi snaps, swinging open the driver's-side door and throwing himself into the car. Kepler arches an eyebrow at him but hands over the keys when he sits down in the passenger seat. Maxwell sits behind Jacobi because it makes Kepler nervous when she sits behind him and she only does it when she wants to make a point.

"You did well back there, Dr. Maxwell," Kepler says once they've all watched the building go up in the rear view and Jacobi's focusing on fighting against the tide of emergency vehicles. "I wasn't... sure you'd be... comfortable. with the requirements of the mission."

"I'm aware," she says.

Kepler presses his hands together where she can't see and smiles a tiny, satisfied smile. Jacobi wants to tell him it makes him look like a cartoon supervillain but all he can smell is blood. There's calling someone out, and then there's hitting the nail right on the uncomfortable goddamn head.

At the hotel, Maxwell is out of the car and inside before Jacobi's even got his seatbelt off. Kepler touches his arm and Jacobi goes still, staring determinedly at the tree and the fire hydrant outside the windshield.

"Do you know how many people were in that building when it exploded, Mr. Jacobi?" Kepler asks, like he's asking about the weather.

"I can make a decent guess, Major."

"And you're aware it was your explosives that killed them."

"Kinda hard to miss." Kepler's hand is still on his arm, warm through the thin canvas of his windbreaker.

"Wonderful," Kepler says. "I just... wanted to... make sure."

Jacobi exhales, surprised at how irritated he is. "Look, Kepler, I'm not going to apologize for having a brief human reaction to walking through literal puddles of blood. There were dead people everywhere. Like bags of garbage. Sorry if that momentarily struck my lizard brain as fucked up."

"That's fine," Kepler lies. "As long as you don't let Maxwell see."

Jacobi gets out of the car. He'll regret it later, Kepler's glare burning into his shoulder blades promises that, but at the moment it's still the safer choice. Kepler doesn't follow him, because he's not going to risk making a scene in a hotel parking lot.

In their room, Maxwell is sitting on the bed, cross-legged, with a laptop on her knees. She's left her shoes and jacket in a pile by the door. They're going to have to burn everything, including the mats in the car, anyway. Jacobi goes and washes his face then comes out and sits down beside her, leaning his back against her shoulder so he's partly turned away from her. "How're you doing?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she says, absently, typing something fast.

"Uh huh?"

"uh huh."  
"Because, you know, if you weren't, that'd be pretty understandable."

"can we skip this conversation, please?"

"Ok, ok, sorry. But if you ever wanna talk... well. I have like half a bottle of brandy in my kitchen cupboard that'd be willing to listen."

She snorts. "Who even drinks brandy?"

He huffs, and slides down on the bed so his head is resting on her thigh, close enough that he can feel the gentle gust of hot air from the laptop fan on his cheek. He hears Kepler come in a few minutes later. He doesn't think about the bodies. Eventually Maxwell starts dragging her fingers through his hair, and he falls asleep until they have to leave to go to the train station.

On the train, Maxwell buys a tiny bag of candies and a paper cup of tea, and then she proceeds to shred the tag on the tea bag into tiny pieces on the table. Across from them, Kepler makes an annoyed noise and snatches the tea bag away from her, crushing it in a napkin and pushing it to the edge of the table out of her reach. Jacobi wants to ask her if she's ok again, but Kepler's presence ensures she won't tell him the truth. Instead, he steals her candy and tries to help Kepler with the crossword, because the true mission of their team is to actually complete a crossword puzzle without cheating at least once before they die.

They're all taking separate flights back to the states, so he doesn't get a chance to check in with her again for a few days. She shows up outside the lab he's working in and loiters outside the window until one of his coworkers says "Just go, Bond, I think Q has a new invisible car for you to try."

He leaves, and as soon as the door's slide shut behind him he says "I'm imagining Kepler is Judi Dench and I want to die."

She stares at him for a few seconds. "We're going to Starbucks."

"is that a metaphor?"

She keeps staring. Her expression hasn't changed in the whole time they've been standing here. "What could that possibly be a metaphor for? No, it's not. Hades is upset with me and I don't know why, but I'd rather be out of the building until I figure it out."

"did he... pick that name himself?" Jacobi asks.

Maxwell shrugs, then turns away and starts walking down the hall. Jacobi trails her until they get outside. Maxwell glances darkly at the parking garage where the self-driving cars live, and then heads off toward the bus stop.

"Jesus," Jacobi says. "What did you _do_?"

"I don't know! Which I just said," Maxwell snaps. Jacobi holds up his hands.

"Sorry, sorry." He waits until they're sitting at the bus stop to say anything else. "Alana. How're you doing?"

He's aware he's not the best at this, but he feels like he should get points for effort.

"I'm _fine_ ," she bites out. "Would you stop with the fucking therapist bullshit?"

"Woah, woah," he leans back. "Ok, sorry I asked."

She folds her arms, unfolds them, unzips her hoodie. "Look. I'm fine, Jacobi, and that seems wrong. I've never killed anybody before. Obviously. And at the time all I was thinking was that I couldn't let it effect me because that's what Kepler expected. I told myself I could freak out about it later. But later never happened."

"Everybody reacts to that sort of thing differently," Jacobi says. He's pretty sure he'd read those exact words on twitter the previous week. It sounds like something he should say in this situation.

"Sure," she says, bitterly. "Some of us react like human beings. Some of us react like warren Kepler. Surprise, Maxwell, it's deeply unpleasant epiphany time!"

"It's not a bad thing," Jacobi says.

"You said you freaked out your first time."

"Technically, that wasn't my first time. I made giant bombs long before I came to Goddard, they weren't being used to blast the way for a new subway line."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't... it wasn't great. But I got over it. I don't let it bother me. You can't, not in this job. So you've got one less step. We all still wind up in the same place."

"I didn't _enjoy_ it," she says, defensive like she's afraid he's assuming she did. "I don't want to have to do it again."

"You just won't object if you have to," he says. "I know. It really is ok, Maxwell."

She shakes her head, rubs her hands over her face. "I feel like this place changes you," she says. "In really... fundamental ways."

Jacobi frowns. "Maybe," he says. "For some people. But I don't think the Major would have chosen us if we were those kind of people."

"So you're saying we were just like this all along. Awesome. Great. fantastic."

"Are you seriously complaining?" he says. "You're going for Starbucks in the middle of a work day because you had a fight with one of the many sentient AI systems you work with, and you decided against taking the self-driving car. Please, tell me where you'd rather be."

She glares at him from between her fingers. "I thought you were trying to comfort me."

"I was, but then you had a moral identity crisis and I panicked and defaulted to being an asshole. I'm still right, though."

She makes an incoherent noise of frustration. "I know." She drops her hands, sits back, leans her shoulder against his. "I killed nine people," she says, evenly.

"Yeah," he says.

"Kepler killed eight."

"Ok," he says, and he thinks he hates Kepler, just a little bit, for making things play out this way. Thinks he maybe hates Maxwell for letting him. The bus comes. They get on. They don't talk about it again.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically the Turing grant would have only been $250,000 in 2011 but I figure if Goddard can basically absorb NASA then google probably started pushing forward a bit earlier, too.
> 
> No, seriously. who the fuck drinks brandy it is terrible
> 
> Please come yell with me on [tumblr](http://thought-42.tumblr.com)


End file.
